Ford Dealers Experiment With Addressable Advertising

A group of New York and New Jersey Ford dealers are experimenting with addressable advertising - the practice of delivering customized advertising using database marketing. The dealer association is running nine versions of the same spot with each delivered based on geography, income and demographics as determined by zip code. Granted, this is hardly what addressable advertising will resemble in the future with true, individualized message targeting but marketers are at least getting their feet wet.

To put the campaign in place, the dealership group worked with its agency, J. Walter Thompson and Visible World's Intellispot software.

The first :15 seconds of each :30 are the same. The second :15 uses the same footage but superimposes different financing options over the second half of the spot.

Visible World EVP Claudio Marcus acknowledges the industry is in its infancy. "We are in the diaper stage right now," Mr. Marcus said, "and many marketers and media buyers are just beginning to understand what it could mean to execute cable TV campaigns in much the same way as direct marketers use household data to plan and execute mailings."